Public surveys on the mainland since the late 1980s have shown that it is among the top concerns of the general public. According to Yan Sun, Associate Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York, it was corruption, rather than democracy as such, that lay at the root of the social dissatisfaction that led to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.[2] Corruption undermines the legitimacy of the CPC, adds to economic inequality, undermines the environment, and fuels social unrest.[6]

Since then, corruption has not slowed down as a result of greater economic freedom, but instead has grown more entrenched and severe in its character and scope. Business deals often involve participation in corruption.[7] In popular perception, there are more dishonest CPC officials than honest ones, a reversal of the views held in the first decade of reform of the 1980s.[2] China specialist Minxin Pei argues that failure to contain widespread corruption is among the most serious threats to China's future economic and political stability.[6] Bribery, kickbacks, theft, and misspending of public funds costs at least three percent of GDP. China, though not a member of the OECD , has participated as an observer in the OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions, see OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.

The spread of corruption in traditional China is often connected to the Confucian concept of renzhi (人治; rénzhì; "Rule of the people") as opposed to the legalist "rule of law" (法治; Fǎzhì). Profit was despised as preoccupation of the base people, while the true Confucians were supposed to be guided in their actions by the moral principle of justice (义; 義; yì). Thus, all relations were based solely on mutual trust and propriety. As a matter of course, this kind of moral uprightness could be developed only among a minority. The famous attempt of Wang Anshi to institutionalize the monetary relations of the state, thus reducing corruption, were met with sharp criticism by the Confucian elite. As a result, corruption continued to be widespread both in the court (Wei Zhongxian, Heshen) and among the local elites, and became one of the targets for criticism in the novel Jin Ping Mei. Another kind of corruption came about in Tang China, developed in connection with the imperial examination system.

In the late Ming dynasty, robust international trade brought an influx of silver into China, enriching merchants and becoming a target of government officials. In the early 1600s, literary works like "The Book of Swindles" created typologies of fraud, including categories such as "Government Underlings" and "Corruption in Education."[8]

The widespread corruption of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, is often credited as being an important component in the defeat of the KMT by the Communist People's Liberation Army. Though the Nationalist Army was initially better equipped and had superior numbers, the KMT's rampant corruption damaged its popularity, limited its support base, and helped the communists in their propaganda war.

Getting high quality, reliable, and standardised survey data on the severity of corruption in the PRC is enormously difficult. However, a variety of sources can still be tapped, which "present a sobering picture," according to Minxin Pei, an academic with expertise on Chinese affairs.[9]

Official deviance and corruption have taken place at both the individual and unit level since the founding of the PRC. Initially the practices had much to do with the danwei (simplified Chinese: 单位; traditional Chinese: 單位; pinyin: dān wèi) system, an outgrowth of communist wartime organs.[10] In the PRC the reforms of Deng Xiaoping were much criticized for making corruption the price of economic development. Corruption during Mao's reign also existed, however.[11]

Emergence of the private sector inside the state economy in post-Mao China has tempted CPC members to misuse their power in government posts; the powerful economic levers in the hands of the elite has propelled the sons of some party officials to the most profitable positions. For this, the CPC has been called the "princelings' party" (Chinese: 太子党; pinyin: taizidang), a reference to nepotistic corruption in some periods of Imperial China. The relatives of several prominent political leaders are reported to have generated large personal wealth in business, including relatives of former Premier Wen Jiabao,[12] Current CPC general secretary Xi Jinping,[13] and former Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai.[14] Attacking corruption in the Party was one of the forces behind the Tiananmen protests of 1989.[15]

The politically unchallenged regime in China creates opportunities for cadres to exploit and control the rapid growth of economic opportunities; and while incentives to corruption grow, effective countervailing forces are absent.[16]

Both structural and non-structural corruption has been prevalent in China. Non-structural corruption exists around the world, and refers to all activities that can be clearly defined as "illegal" or "criminal," mainly including different forms of graft: embezzlement, extortion, bribery etc. Structural corruption arises from particular economic and political structures; this form is difficult to root out without a change of the broader system.[10]

Weak state institutions are blamed for worsening corruption in reform-era China. New Left scholars on China criticise the government for apparent "blind faith" in the market, and especially for its erosion of authority and loss of control of local agencies and agents since 1992. Others also see strong links between institutional decline and rising corruption.[17] Corruption in China results from the Party-State's inability to maintain a disciplined and effective administrative corps, according to Lü Xiaobo, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Barnard College. The Chinese reform-era state has also been an enabling factor, since state agencies have been granted regulatory power without institutional constraints, allowing them to tap into new opportunities to seek profits from the rapid growth in businesses and the economy. This takes place at both the departmental and individual level.[18] Corruption here is part of the dilemma faced by any reforming socialist state, where the state needs to play an active role in creating and regulating markets, while at the same time its own intervention places extra burdens on administrative budgets. Instead of being able to reduce the size of its bureaucratic machinery (and therefore opportunities for corruption), it is instead pressed to expand further. Officials then cash in on the regulatory power by "seeking rents."[19][20]

In 2010, in a rare move due to its perceived impact on stability, Li Jinhua, vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (NCCPPCC) and former long-serving auditor general of the National Audit Office, fired a warning shot in the People's Daily, calling for better legal structures and greater supervision over the business dealings of officials and their children. He said the rapidly growing wealth of Communist officials’ children and family members "is what the public is most dissatisfied about".[15]

According to a January, 2014 investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists more than a dozen family members of China's top political and military leaders are linked to offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands. The report shows that the brother-in-law of China's current Paramount leader, Xi Jinping and the son-in-law of former premier Wen Jiabao are amongst those making use of offshore financial havens to avoid tax and transfer money overseas.[21][22] The Golden Shield Project has blocked foreign news sites that have reported on the scandal.[23]

Opinion surveys of Party officials and Chinese citizens over recent years set identify corruption as one of the public's top concerns. Every year researchers at the Central Party School, the CPC organ that trains senior and midlevel officials, survey over 100 officials at the school. Between 1999 and 2004 respondents ranked corruption as either the most serious or second most serious social problem.[6] Similarly, in late 2006 the State Council’s Development Research Center asked 4,586 business executives (87 percent in nonstate firms) to rate their local officials in terms of integrity. Almost one-quarter said that their local officials were “bad”; 12 percent said they were “very bad.”[6]

In a commercial environment, corruption may be prevalent because many employees are not loyal to their employers, seeing themselves as "free-agent entrepreneurs" first and foremost.[24] They use their employers as a way to make money, both for themselves and for their "guanxi social-circle network." The imperative of maintaining this social circle of benefits is seen as a primary goal for many involved in corruption.[24]

Official corruptions are among the populace's greatest gripes against the regime. One folk saying vividly illustrates how the public sees the issue, according to Yan Sun: "If the Party executes every official for corruption, it will overdo a little; but if the Party executes every other official for corruption, it cannot go wrong."[2] In contemporary China, bribe taking has become so entrenched that one party secretary in a poor county received repeated death threats for rejecting over 600,000 Renminbi in bribes during his tenure. In 1994, in another area officially designated "impoverished," a delegation of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization arrived for a conference on development, but upon seeing rows of imported luxury cars outside the conference site asked the local officials "Are you really poor?"[2] A rare online opinion poll in 2010 by the People’s Daily found that 91% of respondents believe all rich families in China have political backgrounds.[15]

Graft is the most common and refers to bribery, illicit kickbacks, embezzlement, and theft of public funds. Graft involves something of value given to, and accepted by, public officials for dishonest or illegal purposes. It includes officials spending fraudulently or using public funds for their own benefit.[25]

Rent-seeking refers to all forms of corrupt behaviour by people with monopolistic power. Public officials, through granting a license or monopoly to their clients, get "rents"—additional earnings as a result of a restricted market. Rent-seeking happens when officials grant rents to those in their favor.[25] This is akin to cronyism. In the Chinese case, public officials are both rent-generators and rent-seekers, both making rent opportunities for others and seeking such opportunities to benefit themselves. This may include profiteering by officials or official firms, extortion in the form of illicit impositions, fees, and other charges.[25]

Prebendalism refers to when incumbents of public office get privileges and perquisites through that office.[25] Controlling an office entitles the holder to rents or payments for real or fake activities, and organizations are turned from places of work into "resource banks" where individuals and groups pursue their own interests. Prebendal corruption doesn't necessarily need to be about monetary gain, but may include usurpation of official privilege, backdoor deals, clientelism, cronyism, nepotism.[25]

Corruption in the PRC has developed in two major ways. In the first mode, corruption is in the form of ostensibly legal official expenditure, but is actually wasteful and directed toward private benefits. For example, the increasing number of local governments building massive administrative office buildings that resemble luxurious mansions.[9] At the same time, many corrupt local officials have turned their jurisdictions into virtual “mafia states,” where they collude with criminal elements and unsavory businessmen in illegal activities.[9]

While the state and its bureaucrats are major players in the reform-era economy, new interests and concentrations of economic have been created, without legitimate channels between administrators and entrepreneurs.[16] A lack of regulation and supervision has meant these roles are not clearly demarcated (Lü Xiaobo in his text titles one section "From Apparatchiks to Entrepreneurchiks").[26] Illicit guandao enterprises formed by networks of bureaucrats and entrepreneurs are allowed to grow, operating behind a facade of a government agency or state-owned enterprise, in a realm neither fully public nor private.[16] More recently, Ben Hillman has shown how official corruption is facilitated by intrastate patronage networks. According to Hillman, patronage networks 'grease the wheels' of a dysfunctional bureaucracy while simultaneously extracting spoils for the private benefit of their members. Patronage networks also protect transgressors from intrusion by the Party-state's disciplinary agencies. Hillman's study of patronage networks helps to explain how corruption and economic development have been able to coexist in China.[27]

The PLA has also become a major economic player, and participant in large- and small-scale corruption at the same time. Inconsistent tax policy, and a politicised and poorly organised banking system, create ample opportunities for favouritism, kickbacks, and "outright theft," according to Michael Johnston, Professor of Political Science at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.[16]

Corruption has also taken the form of collusion between CPC officials and criminal gangs. Often hidden inside legitimate businesses, gangs had infiltrated public offices and worked closely with the police.[28]The Telegraph quoted an employee of a state company saying: "In fact, the police stations in Chongqing were actually the centre of the prostitution, gambling and drugs rackets. They would detain gangsters from time to time, and sometimes send them to prison, but the gangsters described it as going away for a holiday. The police and the mafia were buddies." In some cases, innocents were hacked to death and dismembered by roaming gangs whose presence was allowed by regime officials, according to the Telegraph.[28]

China's housing boom, and the shift of central government policy towards social housing, are providing officials more ways to siphon off properties for personal gain. The Financial Times cites a number of public scandals involving local officials in 2010: for example, in province, eastern China, a complex of 3,500 apartments designated as social housing in Rizhao, Shandong, was sold to local officials at prices 30-50 per cent below market values. It said in Meixian, Sha’anxi, around 80 per cent of the city’s first social housing development, called Urban Beautiful Scenery, went to local officials. In Xinzhou, Shanxi, a new complex of 1,578 apartments on the local government’s list of designated social housing was almost entirely reserved for local officials, many were 'flipped' for tidy profits even before construction was completed. Jones Lang LaSalle said that transparency about the plans for affordable housing was severely lacking.[29]

Whether the effects of corruption in China are solely positive or negative is a subject of hot debate. Corruption favors the most connected and unscrupulous, rather than the efficient, and also creates entry barriers in the market for those without such connections. Favors are sought for inefficient subsidies, monopoly benefits, or regulatory oversight, rather than productive activity.[30] Bribes also lead to a misdirection of resources into wasteful or poor-quality projects. Further, since corrupt payments are usually done in secrecy, they are more likely to be used in the same way, driving the proceeds of illegal transactions into foreign bank accounts. Such capital flight costs national growth.[30] Centralised corruption also carries with it the same defects, according to Yan. Rent seeking, for example, is costly to growth because it prevents innovation. Rent seeking activities are also self-sustaining, since such activity makes it seem more attractive compared to productive activity. Corruption is never a better option to honest public policy, Yan Sun argues, and it distorts and retards development.[31]

Others, including local officials, play down the negative impacts of corruption, and local cadres frown on anticorruption efforts for three reasons: a preoccupation with rooting out corruption may lead to cautiousness about new practices; corruption may act as a "lubricant" to "loosen up" the bureaucracy and facilitate commercial exchanges; and thirdly, corruption is a necessary trade-off and inevitable part of the process of reform and opening up.[32] They argue that the destructiveness of corruption in the Chinese context helps transfer or reallocate power from officials, perhaps even enabling the rise of a "new system" and acting as a driving force for reform.[33]

Nevertheless, the deleterious effects of corruption were documented in detail in Minxin Pei's report. The amount of money stolen through corruption scandals has risen exponentially since the 1980s, and corruption in China is now more concentrated in the sectors the state is heavily involved with.[6] These include infrastructure projects, real estate, government procurement, and financial services. The lack of a competitive political process means these are high-risk areas for fraud, theft, and bribery; Pei estimates the cost of corruption could be up to $86 billion per year.[6]

Corruption in China also harms Western business interests,[34] in particular foreign investors. They risk human rights, environmental, and financial liabilities, at the same time squaring off against rivals who engage in illegal practices to win business.[6]

Long term, corruption has potentially "explosive consequences," including widening income inequalities within cities and between city and countryside, and creating a new, highly visible class of "socialist millionaires," which further fuels resentment from the citizenry.[16]

Ordinary Chinese are many times, the victims in official corruption, as in the case of Hewan village in Jiangsu province, where 200 thugs were hired to attack local farmers and force them off their land so Party bosses could build a petrochemical plant. Sun Xiaojun, the party chief of Hewan village, was later arrested. One farmer died.[35] Officials themselves are increasingly victims of official corruption when they target each other out of jealousy, hunger for promotion: there have been high-profile cases of mainland bureaucrats employing hit men or launching acid attacks on rivals. In August 2009, a former director of the Communications Bureau in Hegang, Heilongjiang, who hired hitmen to kill his successor, supposedly because of the latter's ingratitude, was given the death penalty.[36]

This section needs to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(June 2015)

The CPC has tried a variety of anti-corruption measures, constructing a variety of laws and agencies in an attempt to stamp out corruption, but almost none have been proven to be even mildly effective.

In 2004, the CPC devised strict regulations on officials assuming posts in business and enterprise. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Central Organization Department issued a joint circular instructing Party committees, governments and related departments at all levels not to give approval for Party and government officials to take up concurrent posts in enterprises.[37] Law 395 related to the illicit enrichment of public officials was also enacted.

The Anti-Unfair Competition Law prohibits commercial bribery punishable by economic and administrative sanctions. It is prohibited to give or receive bribes in the course of selling or purchasing goods. In case of misconduct, companies are fined in between 10.000 RMB and 200.000 RMB The Criminal Law of China prohibits giving and receiving property to obtain an undue benefit, with penalties including fines, confiscation of property, imprisonment or death.
Such measures are largely ineffective, however, due to the insufficient enforcement of the relevant laws.[9] Further, because the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection largely operates in secrecy, it is unclear to researchers how allegedly corrupt officials are disciplined and punished. The odds for a corrupt official to end up in prison are less than three percent, making corruption a high-return, low risk activity. This leniency of punishment has been one of the main reasons corruption is such a serious problem in China.[9]

While corruption has grown in scope and complexity, anti-corruption policies, on the other hand, have not changed much.[16] Communist-style mass campaigns with anti-corruption slogans, moral exhortations, and prominently displayed miscreants, are still a key part of official policy, much as they were in the 1950s.[16]

In 2009, according to internal Party reports, there were 106,000 officials found guilty of corruption, an increase of 2.5 percent on the previous year. The number of officials caught embezzling more than one million RMB (US$146,000) went up by 19 percent over the year. With no independent oversight like NGOs or free media, corruption has flourished.[38]

These efforts are punctuated by an occasional harsh prison term for major offenders, or even executions. But rules and values for business and bureaucratic conduct are in flux, sometimes contradictory, and “deeply politicized.”[16] In many countries systematic anti-corruption measures include independent trade and professional associations, which help limit corruption by promulgating codes of ethics and imposing quick penalties, watchdog groups like NGOs, and a free media. In China, these measures do not exist as a result of the CPC’s means of rule.[16]

Thus, while CPC disciplinary organs and prosecutorial agencies produce impressive statistics on corruption complaints received from the public, few citizens or observers believe corruption is being systematically addressed.[16]

There are also limits to how far anti-corruption measures will go. For example, when Hu Jintao's son was implicated in a corruption investigation in Namibia, Chinese Internet portals and Party-controlled media were ordered not to report on it.[39]

At the same time, local leaders engage in "corruption protectionism," as coined by the head of the Hunan provincial Party Discipline Inspection Commission; apparatchiks thwart corruption investigations against the staff of their own agencies, allowing them to escape punishment. In some cases this has impelled high-ranking officials to form special investigative groups with approval from the central government to avoid local resistance and enforce cooperation.[40] However, since in China vertical and horizontal leadership structures often run at odds with one another, CPC anti-corruption agencies find it hard to investigate graft at the lower levels. The goal of effectively controlling corruption thus remains elusive to the ruling Party, and only a propaganda tool to mislead the Chinese public on its false promises.[40]

Prominent anti-corruption cases in China are often an outgrowth of factional struggles for power in the CPC, as opponents use the "war of corruption" as a weapon against rivals in the Party or corporate world.[39][41] Often, too, the central leadership's goal in cracking down on corruption is to send a message to those who step over some "unknown acceptable level of graft" or too obviously flaunt its benefits. Another reason is to show an angry public that the Party is doing something about the problem.[39]

The strict controls placed on the media by the Chinese government limit the discovery and reporting of corruption in China. Nevertheless, there have been cases of whistleblowers publicising corruption in China, such as Guo Wengui.[44]